The lead plaintiffs will be the guild and a few of its members. They'll extend the class to include all of the Guild's members and anyone else who's ever learned to scrape a pencil without breaking the point. Most of the class won't know they're in it until all the litigating is over.

The rest of the members will be mailed a notification of settlement, including instructions on how to get their $0.38 share of the award (the lawyers, of course, will get about $45M off the top).

The notification will include instructions on several ways not to get your $0.38, one of which will be to opt-out, retaining your rights to sue Google as an individual.

Good luck spending $10 million protecting the copyright on a book you can't get anyone to print even for a fee any more.

Oh, and dear Google, did you mispell one or more of the words in "Don't Be Evil"?

The rest of the members will be mailed a notification of settlement, including instructions on how to get their $0.38 share of the award (the lawyers, of course, will get about $45M off the top).

Except that there's no payment for anyone (except the laywers, of course), because the judge rejected the settlement -- Google wanted to pay $125M for the ability to make out-of-print books available online, giving authors the ability to opt out. The judge suggests that opt-in would be better, but I'd guess that there are many more out-of-print books with authors that are dead, just-don't-care or would be happy that their books will be available, than those that want their out-of-print book to stay out of print because they have some grand plan to reissue it some day.

So the opt-in model is far less valuable to public (and to Google) because it means that far fewer out-of-print books can be made available.

So the opt-in model is far less valuable to public (and to Google) because it means that far fewer out-of-print books can be made available.

I was a member of this class, and I'm glad this settlement got overturned. I don't have any out-of-print books, apparently the class included everyone who had a book copyright registered in the USA - Google is indexing and posting online all books that they can, not just ones that are out of print. The reason that I'm glad that the settlement was overturned is that it gives Google far too much power. After paying the token sum, Google may put any out of print books online, but anyone else doing so gets a statutory fine for wilful copyright infringement of $750-$150,000 per book.

Google basically gambled that they could violate copyright on all books and get away with it. Rather than lobbying to make some sane changes to copyright law, they want copyright to remain overly strict, but to just apply to everyone except them. One law for Google, one law for everyone else. Of course, it's okay because Google isn't evil...

I have to agree though I do consider it a great loss(and a failing of our current copyright system) that vast numbers of works will effectively be lost forever if the last copies expire before the copyright does.in the US that means forever the way things are going.Can't go making copies without permission from the copyright holder after all.

If you litterally cannot find anyone to pay or ask permission from then you can't make it your own more permanent copy.

Having worked with getting copyright permissions for texts I can tell you that it's really hard, e.g. I spent ~8 hours finding out that a guy I was dead. If all you have is a name/pseudonym/nickname/publisher, then it's lots of work. In this case the guys mother was very happy and released the work under CC-by-SA. So it was well spent time, but not economical.

Not really - the settlement would allow Google to distribute them to you, but it would not allow you to redistribute them further (as you're not a party to that settlement).

But redistribution isn't necessary here, if everybody can get them from Google.

We're not looking to the future as to how to license some new software - these are old works, forever trapped by copyright to benefit the Disney Corporation. Without the Google solution, we get nothing. I'd love to hear about any other options.

But redistribution isn't necessary here, if everybody can get them from Google.

Doesn't giving this kind of competitive advantage to a single for-profit corporation strike you as unfair?

I'd love to hear about any other options.

The only fair option would be to push for the same kind of deal to apply to anyone (i.e. so long as you pay the same as what Google does, you can redistribute books under the same rules).

Alternatively, establish a government-backed non-profit specifically for this purpose, and entrust the license to them. That would be a little bit like a library, though you'd still have to pay to get books (to cover th

The only fair option would be to push for the same kind of deal to apply to anyone (i.e. so long as you pay the same as what Google does, you can redistribute books under the same rules).

Sure, that's fair. Is there something exclusionary in the Google contract? I sort of figured this is like when Apple did the deal with the record labels. iTunes was exclusive at first, but it cracked open the vault for all the subsequent competitors.

Sure, that's fair. Is there something exclusionary in the Google contract?

Well, yes - it's not a contract, it's a settlement. They get to copy copyrighted works without being considered infringing copyright (since the scheme is opt-out rather than opt-in). You can't sign a contract with the guild to let you do something like that, because it wouldn't be binding on the entire class. You'd need to infringe first, same as Google did, and on a scale to make it into a class action where guild represents the entire class, and then hope that they agree to strike a similar deal with you.

Google is indexing and posting online all books that they can, not just ones that are out of print. The reason that I'm glad that the settlement was overturned is that it gives Google far too much power. After paying the token sum, Google may put any out of print books online

Man you are REALLY going to be pissed when you find out what they are doing in libraries.

Google basically gambled that they could violate copyright on all books and get away with it.

Actually, Google was sued for digitally copying library books, making them searchable, and allowing users to see a few "snippets" in the search results. The copying is exactly analogous to the copy of every webpage that exists inside any search engine. A lot of people get confused because the Google Books project also encompasses an opt-in publisher program that allows people to read several pages of books. But for books from libraries that are still under copyright, all Google has done is make a digital in

The issue here is that it isn't possible for anybody else to negotiate the same deal Google was going for with this settlement. Google was trying to reach a deal with an entire class, not a specific group of authors. So while a competitor could negotiate a similar deal with specific authors or groups of authors, they would be unable to create a deal with the entire class of authors (unless faced with a class action lawsuit and able to negotiate the same settlement).

It sounds like the judge agreed with this objection and indicated that the deal might work if authors needed to opt-in rather than opt-out. Under an opt-in system, authors could opt-in to a competitor's service as well as Google's. Alternatively, Google could try to get copyright law changed so that their opt-out system would be allowed by law (and competitors could set up similar systems without facing infringement lawsuits).

It sounds like the judge agreed with this objection and indicated that the deal might work if authors needed to opt-in rather than opt-out. Under an opt-in system, authors could opt-in to a competitor's service as well as Google's.

Sounds like the Judge's ruling could be overturned on appeal.
Google's competitors are not party to the class action suit.

The court is to accept the settlement if it is fair and equitable to members of the class suing.
The quotation is problematic

rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.”

The court is concentrating on the settlement containing a "reward" for Google.
But it is not unusual, when parties settle, for the agreement to contain terms that reward both parties.
In this case it is not a zero sum game -- Google's "wholesale copying" is beneficial to the settlement class, if only, Google can compensate them, and the legal action is Google's only opportunity to do so.

Google is worth like a gazillion dollars. Google has the resources to simply do what it wants anyway and wait for injured parties to come forward. So long as they are reasonably careful about selecting out of print books for which owners cannot be readily tracked down, one could reasonably expect them to be able to publish THOUSANDS of books like this while having to settle only a few lawsuits filed by copyright holders.

Can any of those "lesser competitors" get away with this? Perhaps if that "lesser" is na

But there's a pretty good chance that you won't find one of those out of print books in your local library. I live in a mid sized city and our library system has 2 million books.... Google claims to have scanned 15 million.

I do get the point of class actions, but it should be an essential requirement in such settlements that the defendant cease the activity hurting the plaintiffs. Just because Toyota settles a class action over faulty brakes don't mean they now have a perpetual legal indemnity to continue shipping faulty brakes. Yet Google wants to retain the right to continue using all these works, it's a licensing scheme not a damage settlement. Just because I happen to be part of a class doesn't mean that class should be able to license my work at will. That is a grant, not a settlement.

But if you can't keep doing it, there's no reason to settle. Unless that's part of the settlement.

Google infringed on a few books. The $125M was to make it okay for them to infringe on all books. If they were just going to stop infringing and compensate the people they've already infringed, their offer would be like $1.98.

Google infringed on a few books. The $125M was to make it okay for them to infringe on all books. If they were just going to stop infringing and compensate the people they've already infringed, their offer would be like $1.98.

Nope, this is the RIAA lawsuits in reverse... 750$-150,000$ statutory damages per work. That does require your work to be registered with the US copyright office, but I imagine that even fairly obscure authors do that as part of the publishing process.

How does some guild get authority to represent all authors of out of print fiction?

Well, according to TFB (blurb), that's essentially the judge's rationale for rejecting the deal.

I am torn: on one hand, I believe that copyright law no longer "promotes the progress of Science and useful Arts", so I would like to see Google have the ability to make a sweeping digital library of abandonware books (seriously, if the authors aren't selling the book, how are they harmed?)

However, if this deal went through, it seems likely that it would have been the birth of another MAFIAA-style intellectual property racket.

So, perhaps we are considering the situation from an artificially constrained viewpoint. The pragmatic approach to getting the digital library would have been to take the deal with this newborn devil, but we would have to live with those consequences. The idealistic approach would be to "fix" copyright law so that such a library could be created... you know, the better to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

Does anyone else want some of what I am apparently smoking to cause me to have such fantastic & vague ideas (haha)? Maybe I got hit on the head or something.

I am pretty sour on the notions of copyright and patents in general. If we had a literary and music patent that expired after five year or so and could not be extended it would seem like a reasonable concept. Music is even more of an issue as music is broadcast. Broadcasting is like throwing bird seed all over town. You simply have no control of which birds get the seed or how often they make use of it. Then it gets even worse. Suppose someone writes a catchy tune for voice and I want to play that

So you have no issues with people taking abandoned GPL projects and relicensing them as they see fit?

Although there would be a lot of details involved, I generally would support having abandoned, copyrighted software that was licensed under the GPL entering the public domain. While I suppose this means that some third party could offer it pursuant to some proprietary license, there wouldn't be much point, as they'd have no exclusivity over the public domain materials.

Indeed, I've never heard that GNU has a problem with the fact that copyrights are supposed to expire, which would result in the GPL no longer

You're missing the key point of the GPL, which is that anything you create using GPL stuff must also be open source and licensed under the GPL. That is what is lost when the work enters the public domain. Sure, the original work remains available, but newly created stuff can be closed source. In effect you have converted the GPL license to a BSD type license.

I understand how the GPL works. I even like the GPL. But the public domain is more important. Given this ordering of priorities, I really don't understand how things could work out differently. I'm open to suggestions.

If it's any consolation, a work that is derivative of a formerly-GPLed-but-now-public-domain work is only copyrightable in its new portions. Portions that were copied from the previous work remain in the public domain.

I doubt any GPL authors would mind it if some company released a closed source version of 2000's Linux when copyright on it expires in 2050 or so.Assuming there will still be computers able to run that old code anymore.

So you have no issues with people taking abandoned GPL projects and relicensing them as they see fit?

If the abandoned works had their copyright abrogated then those works would enter public domain. They couldn't be "relicensed" at that point, but you are correct that derivative works could be made with alternative licenses to the original GPL that was attached to the work.

However, I don't believe that would be a catastrophic situation. It is not as though the source would be lost—as a matter of fact it would still be Free. No matter whether you are in the BSD or GPL license advocacy camp, everyone

Once again the legacy business model behemoth that is, well, anything from the USA it seems right now, stamps all over innovation. I bet there's hundreds of books that would be useful to me that could either not be found over here, out of print, or just plain overpriced that need some better system for handling them in this age.

However, having one corporate behemoth gain EXCLUSIVE rights to the works by paying

The answer to that is to require compulsory licensing from the guild to anyone with the resources to do what Google did.

a guild that doesn't actually necessarily even have rights to all the works in question is NOT THE SOLUTION.

The answer to that is to require some active action to keep a work in copyright, like renewing it every 5 years - that way everyone benefits - authors that really care can keep the rights to their work, but as for the rest, they get released to the public to enjoy. Oh and make sure that only an author or direct relative can renew the copyright, otherwise companies will just buy up copyrig

Except the part about only the author or direct relative renewing. If Steven King dies and leaves no heirs that shouldn't mean the books are all public domain within 5 years. I have no issue with a company renewing copyrights.

It shouldn't be based on the author's lifespan at all. It should be based on the readers' expectation lifespan, and be set to expire well before more than half of the original readers do.

30 to 50 years is still too long, but a fixed term is much better than one that floats on the author's obituary. For one thing it lets older authors cash out to the full extent that their younger contemporaries might be able to, since the time for any companies buying their works to recoup the investment would be the same

Yes. You forgot that capitalism is the primary religion of the US. That's why many people believe that the offspring of a creative genius somehow deserves a life of leisure, gratis -- presumably for having the good sense to be born in the right family. It's a strange and primitive religion...

That only means the copyright troll will "sell" 50 copies to their subsidiary company... it's certainly cheaper than the current system of hiring an attorney to file bullshit papers every 3/4 of a century.

Well, in the fine arts, copyrights don't matter much. People pay more for the copy than for the work. An original Picasso, for example, is a worth far more than a postcard of the same piece, no matter how accurately the postcard reproduces the work. I suppose there are some fine artists who find copyrights to be very important, e.g. Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, but they tend to be the exception. You could probably get rid of copyright for the fine arts altogether and it wouldn't change things very much

The answer to that is to require compulsory licensing from the guild to anyone with the resources to do what Google did.

That might indeed be better than what's actually proposed. By the way, this is not a hypothetical scenario. The non-profit Internet Archive has been working on a similar project for many years (albeit much more slowly), and they were one of the parties that filed to oppose the Google Books deal, precisely because they would have been cut out and their labor (and hard-to-come-by money) would have been wasted.

Frankly, I'd much rather see a deal that allows the Internet Archive to continue their work, becaus

Oh? I think Google's got a fairly good fair use argument. A book search engine, while using all of a creative work for profit, does not appreciably harm the copyright holders, reduce the market for the book, etc.

After all, Google does precisely the same thing with web pages. If you think that a book search engine is a brazen violation of the law -- the whole law -- then search engines all need to be shut down for damn near everything.

I don't think that result would be in keeping with our copyright policy.

Judge Chin does make a good point. Even though the book is out of print, the author is still the copyright holder and should have say in whether or not the out of print book may go into a Google digital library. After all, maybe the publisher decided to drop the book because it wasn't selling and the author may want to look for a different publisher or attempt to self-publish. I can see the digitalization of out of print material where the author is deceased and therefore has no say in the matter.

You have lots of opinions about how it ought to be, but that's not how it is now.

No one has an obligation to publish their books at a cost that you find to your liking. Perhaps they want to make it a limited edition in the truest sense. Perhaps the work has themes they no longer approve of and chose not to reprint/republish, an author is under no obligation to continue to make such things available.

The point of copyright protection is to 'promote the progress', i.e. to encourage people to publish, it most c

As an example, I think it is fairly safe to assume that Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick is deceased.

Like a vampire? [scribblingninjas.com] Or if he had some supernatural abilities like flying or bending bullets [mtv.com] which may have allowed him to have a supernatural life span?Who knows, maybe there IS some truth in that story that "his" obituary actually said Henry Melville.Maybe he is still alive, wandering the world, moving silently down through the centuries, living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the Gathering - when the few of his kind that will remain shall battle to the last.

Unless they purchased a copy of everything they've scanned, they've already violated copyright by doing the scanning. There are four factors in considering "fair use" and making a copy of the entire book pretty much blows one of them out of the water. The fact that they are adding zero additional material to the books strikes another. The fact that they are monetizing the copyright violation makes a third.

The authorizations granted to Google in this Amended Settlement Agreement are non-exclusive only, and nothing in this Amended Settlement Agreement shall be construed as limiting any Rightsholderâ(TM)s right to authorize, through the Registry or otherwise, any Person, including direct competitors of Google, to use his, her or its Books or Inserts in any way, including ways identical to those provided for under this Amended Settlement Agreement.

Google was not trying to get exclusive rights to anything. Anyone and everyone else would have been free to scan in books and sell them exactly like Google wanted to do.

Everyone posting here about how evil Google is for wanting exclusive rights to sell these books is wrong. None of them have read the proposed settlement and they have no clue what they're talking about. They're spreading FUD and you idiots are falling for it.

No, you're absolutely right. Absolutely anybody else who wanted to could compete by:
* Openly commiting a massive infringement (note that non-massive infringement would not be sufficient)
* Being sued by the Author's Guild
* Having that suit granted a class action status
* Having a large enough legal team you can fight the class action lawyers
* Convincing the class action lawyers that they should settle into a business deal instead of cashing out
* Ensuring that this deal is sweeter for the lawyers than Google's or they'll just keep monopoly rents through Google

Google is a publishing company. It typically believes it has the right to profit from content created by other people, even without their permission. In fact, that is their entire business model -- selling ads against content created by other people. (search is how they draw in the eyeballs, or it used to be, now they also have phones, web services, etc.)

But in this deal with the "Authors Guild" they were really overreaching. They were trying to make themselves the defacto publisher of all copyrighted wo

A while back I was doing some research on vacuum tube based logic circuits (don't ask). My random googling brought up repeated mention of several books. They may even be public domain by now, I'm unsure. They dated to around WWII.

Anyhow, regardless of copyright status, the things were absolute fucking unobtainium. It really is a shame that things like this essentially get lost to the wheel of time. Whether it be due to copyright, or just plain being out of print and public domain. It's a crime against knowledge.

Fortunately I don't think this will be the case in the future, as most currently released books are surely digitized (legally or not) and hopefully will be around by the time they are hopelessly obsolete, out of print, lacking demand, commercially unviable, and/or enter public domain.

I guarantee you, those books are sitting on a shelf in a library someplace. Probably within a thousand miles of you. And we have this lovely thing called "interlibrary loan," an arrangement under which you can walk into your local library and borrow those books from the library that has them, either for free or for a small processing fee, depending on how badly the library's budget has fared in recent cuts. We saved those books for you. That's what we do. Please come borrow them.

As for the future, well, digital copies are actually a LOT harder to preserve long term. I myself have files that I can no longer open, because I no longer have a copy of the word processor "Sprint" running on MS-DOS 5.0. They're less than twenty years old, and are essentially unusable.

By contrast, I once held and read a hand-written breviary from fourteenth century Italy, a good six and half centuries old and still usable. If we could find a way to archive digital information which would guarantee its usability a mere century from now, I'd rest a lot more easily.

As for the future, well, digital copies are actually a LOT harder to preserve long term. I myself have files that I can no longer open, because I no longer have a copy of the word processor "Sprint" running on MS-DOS 5.0. They're less than twenty years old, and are essentially unusable.

Well that's just short-sightedness. There are still converters for Sprint format however, and I'd be happy to convert them for you if you promise not to put them into another proprietary format.

By contrast, I once held and read a hand-written breviary from fourteenth century Italy, a good six and half centuries old and still usable. If we could find a way to archive digital information which would guarantee its usability a mere century from now, I'd rest a lot more easily.

Yeah, but I have more books on my cell-phone than currently exist from the fourteenth century.

I just thought of this, and hadn't seen anyone else mention it. What happens to the used book market? Instantly, a lot of people who have property of some value now will have its value erased. There's a book I want to read that's out of print but usually around $30. I'll buy it eventually. The instant it goes on the net for free, the value of a used copy goes to zero for me.

Instantly, a lot of people who have property of some value now will have its value erased.

When you purchases a book, you are not entitled by law to that book having some (or any) particular resale value after a while - unless your contract with the book dealer said otherwise, in which case you may sue him.

Does the value of the used physical copy go to zero for you, or does the value of the book's content go to zero?

Whether in digital form, translated to audio, or shaped with ink to form letters on a physical medium (paper), the content is the real value of a book. The physical aspect of a paper copy is separate. I love the feel of books and have trouble thinking that I would ever read anything but reference materials on a digital screen, but I can equally conceive of the physical copy being seen as useless b

Any time you're holding an asset, be it a security or real estate or tangible good, it's best to remember the FINRA warning: past performance is not an indication of future returns. That out of print book could just as easily lose value by the publisher printing it again (though it wouldn't go to zero), which is essentially what this is. If that never occurred to you, you have no business trading used books.

NB- I only discuss the value of the content here, the market for first editions would be unchanged

I just finished reading the entire decision. It was quite interesting but at 45 pages I doubt many people here would bother.

The judge pointed out quite a few problems with the settlement proposal, but two of the most important are:1) It's pretty likely that the settlement would violate a number of US and international laws.2) It would contradict recent US Supreme Court decisions that say it is the job of Congress to update copyright law for changing technology.

I'm all for copyright owners getting their due according to the law as it stands (different argument as to if that law itself needs fixing), but it's not fair for creative third parties to require navigating a mnefield to locate rightsholders who can run the gamut from "Oh I'm so happy someone is finally letting my dusty creativity see the light of day again" to "greedy I am, pay me a fortune or I sue you to hell", and some of which may pull a Rambus and hide

Despite its attempts to spin itself as the white knight, Google is far from altrusitic and this ruling is a victory for the little guy. It was bad enough when Google started illegal scanning copyrighted works. It was bad enough when Google's only response was "fine we'll stop, but only when you specifically ask us to for YOUR books". But the deal that would give Google such extensive control over the scanning and sale of these works? That was unacceptable and I'm glad the judge agreed.
I really wish people would wake up and realize that Google has long since abandon its "Don't be Evil" motto.

Could you be a little more obviously prejudiced? And while you're at it, could you please identify how anyone (Google or not) goes about getting access to (or rights for) a book by a dead author that's not longer in print?

It sure would be nice if all those works weren't effectively dead (and their knowledge lost) just because my local bookstore or library can't get them.

That is extremely true. Now, perhaps Google shouldn't be the -only- way to acquire these books, but it's a start. I, for one, would -love- to be able to buy some obscure paperback from the 80's in ebook form, especially when I couldn't find it in print.

Now, sure, we'd all like to compensate the author etc... but if the author stops publishing something, then we -need- another way to get it, lest the content gets lost.If we had 20 year copyrights, that would be one thing - in 20 years a few copies will still

It sure would be nice if all those works weren't effectively dead (and their knowledge lost) just because my local bookstore or library can't get them.

They are not lost. Pretty much every work has to be deposited in the Library of Congress or similar institutions (Nasjonalarkivet here in Norway). If you truly wanted copyright to expire earlier you could easily make some kind of process where abandoned works would enter the public domain.

In fact that was the case in the US up to 1992. The problem was that a lot of active holders failed to realize and erroneously let their works expire. Plus there's as far as I know no good international system of renewal so really only the big corporations with procedures would get it done worldwide. It's a less than ideal system yet still massively better than letting Google just grab it underhandedly.

I'm not a lawyer, but even if an author dies, wouldn't their estate (or their heirs, or their publishers) generally own the rights to their work? If there's a valid will, the rights would transfer according to the dictates of the will; if there's no will, then intestate succession would determine the assignment of the rights, with the rights eventually falling to the government if no appropriate next of kin is found (the process is, in my understanding, known as 'escheat').

Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in 1954 - 1955. Fifty-seven years later a series of movies were made that grossed $2.925 Billion dollars. They started filming The Hobbit yesterday.

And Disney made movies out of the brothers grimm tales which if we had the same copyright back then as we do now, WOULD STILL HAVE BEEN UNDER COPYRIGHT.
That's right, no fairy tale reproductions for anyone. It was a great thing that the tales fell in the public domain, because it allowed others to work with them and adapt them, just as it would be excellent for lord of the rings to be public domain by now.
At some point, you have to realize that copyright as it stands essentially acts as a tax upon cultur

That's only part of the problem. The other part is that Google would have been granted a license to disregard copyright (for the cheap price of $125m! That's about 30 cents per American. Don't you wish that you collectively could by an exemption from copyright or that little?), but no one else would have. I wouldn't have minded if Google had been advocating a change to the law to make this kind of archive possible. Some form of compulsory licensing with fixed royalty rates would have been great. But a ruling that lets Google violate copyright but prevents their competitors from doing the same thing? That's pretty horrible.

It needs to be not specific to a single company. Any real solution to abandonware issue should allow anyone to redistribute, for a certain reasonable criteria of "abandon", and with a clear mechanism for copyright holder to opt-out.

It would be nice to get free things, and I hate the MPAA and RIAA as much as the next/.er, but rewarding a company for illegally copying books from the library seems lame to me. Digitizing the data is to make a reproduction of the work by definition. It doesn't even have to be distributed by google, the fact that they have kept scanned master copies of all the books they could get their hands on is illegal. I don't understand why they have been able to keep this dataset at all...

I think you're missing the core issue. Google scanning a bunch of books and then not showing them to anybody is hard to make out as a crime against humanity. The crime against humanity is a copyright system that renders nearly all out-of-print books (i.e., 95% of books ever written) as orphans, protected against copying but with authors that are long-gone (in many cases long-dead). Everyone loses in this situation: Authors of out of print books cannot make money, readers can't get the books unless they live close to a good library, and publishers receive no revenue from this back-catalog of older material. The core question is, how do we get all of that content to be useful again? The judge's "solution" of opt-in is no solution, because by definition orphaned works have no rights holder to opt in for them.

The correct answer would be to change our copyright laws to accomodate for orphaned works. With this ruling I hope Congress finally grows the stones to take that on, however with the Hollywood lobby I'm not hopeful. In the end we will likely have millions of volumes of our culture simply vanish as at the library of Alexandria, all because nobody cares.

Copyrights were created so that authors could profit from their works for a time, under a protected monopoly, in exchange for releasing their works into the public domain after the period of their profit.

by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors

Once dead, this no longer applies. Nowhere in there is mentioned estates, and the original application of copyright specifically ceased at death.

From Copyright Act of 1790:to secure to the said authors, if they shall survive the term first mentioned

No I don't. I go to the public library. My childrens' children will use the inter-cyber-future-web-net instead of a physical library. But the computers will have to read to them, because being my childrens' children, they'll be a little mentally challenged. Maybe I should make sure that I have only one gender of children.

If you're convinced that's true, digitize them yourself and self-pub on Kindle, PubIt, Smashwords, etc. It's not that hard.

It is when your publisher holds the rights but doesn't find it profitable enough to issue a new edition of your book.On the other hand, try to buy it off from them - and they will set some imaginary price based on "projections of sales" and copyright extended a day or two beyond forever.Incidentally, there was recently some talk on Slashdot regarding such issues. [slashdot.org]

Yes, it does suck if you don't have a good reversion-of-rights clause in the contract. On the other hand, if the contract doesn't explicitly license electronic rights to the publisher (and assuming nothing like a blanket "all rights" grant), then you can still go ahead and e-pub yourself.

(Disclaimer: IANAL - but I am an author who has read plenty of publishing contracts and signed a few of them.)

Well, you don't gain $1200 that you maybe shouldn't anyway, which is a different thing entirely.

I have to agree with those that say Google doesn't get a pass here. Either the law changes so anyone including me can copy and offer for free certain works, or nobody does. Google has violated copyright on what, 15 million works? They have wholesale copied them. There's really no defense. They did something blatantly illegal because they thought it was a good idea. Statutory damages should be around $200 bi